Two experiments examined developmental trends in children's lexical decisions for abstract and concrete words. The first experiment examined children's on-line comprehension of abstract and concrete words. Subjects were 15 second or third graders and 15 college adults at the University of Georgia. The second experiment provided a stronger test of the finding that children relied more than adults did on sensory, imaginal information in making lexical decisions. Subjects were 48 people from a rural Georgia public school system--a mix of children and adults. In both experiments, third-grade children's lexical decisions seemed to reflect the tendency to retrieve sensory/imaginal information, whereas adults and fifth-grade children's decisions seemed to reflect the use of readily available contextual information from prior knowledge. Findings suggest that there is a developmental shift in the kinds of semantic characteristics that are readily available to children in making lexical decisions. Two tables of data are included. (Contains 41 references.) (Author/RS)